Poker Gods/Bot Hunters: If you saw the following, what would you do?

[Spaggy]

(CLIFF NOTES) - player X is most likely a bot. He is easy to beat, and plays 20 tables at a time. Three questions come out of my rant below, and are the following:

1. Is this player a bot, and/or what are the chances he is?
2. Since he isn't very good regardless, is it still my obligation to report him?
3. Am I violating any T/Cs if I choose to just follow him around and try to clean him out assuming I don't report him?

Before I get in to details, I'd like it to be clear that I'm not in any way a tinfoil hatter when it comes to "zomg bots are everywhere" and "site x is rigged for (insert stupid reason here." If anything, I think that bots are most likely out there, but are also mostly losing players or easily exploitable.

Also, I use too many commas and probably include more words and details than necessary. I apologize in advance to any reader who finds this annoying.

Here is what happened last night on Pokerstars.

I'm cruising along late last night (2am or so) playing SNGs and .10/.25 NL to kill time before I go to sleep. I generally don't pay much attention to player habits (PT and PAHUD are good enough), so for me to notice anything makes it likely that the behavior is extremely obvious to a better player. I observe the following at the cash table:

1. There is a player who takes almost exactly 15 seconds to make every decision, even those that don't involve money (folding preflop, checking the BB when nobody has raised, etc). This reason specifically ends up being why I get involved, but more on that later.

2. He doesn't respond to anyone in the chat box, including variations of his SN and the word bot. Lets say his SN is botmaster. I started saying things like "hey b0tmaster, tell your bot to stop using an abacus to calculate pot odds" to see if there was a script to "red flag" a table, as I figure any bot maker with brains would do this.

3. I check to see what else he's playing, and see he is playing 20+ tables, all at the .10/.25 level, and always starts with $25 stacks. I know this is technically possible, especially with hotkeys, but this furthers my suspicions that something is up.

4. When I finally include his SN spelled correctly and the word bot in the same sentence, he begins ranting almost instantly about his not being a bot, that I'm an idiot, and how he "dares me to prove that he's running bots." He more or less brags about how they'll never be able to prove anything, and that he's been investigated before, etc etc. His play also speeds up to that of a regular player.

Long story short (sort of), I end up telling him that honestly I don't care what he's doing (as he's dumping chips like crazy and plays predictably), and that I just wanted him to speed up his game. I explain that most of what I said was just a level to get his attention and get him to manually play this table, including my joke about transferring me a few grand so I "forget" that I noticed anything. He insults me a bit more, realizes that he just got leveled (and leveled hard), and then stops chatting.

Within 5 minutes, he's back to 10-15 seconds per decision, unresponsive, and seemed to have returned to bot mode. I check a few other tables he's at and it's the same thing on all of them. His SN on Stars is left out for obvious reasons, and my SN is completely different than my 2p2 name.

So, for all the people here smarter than me and more experienced in outing bots, what would you do? If he is a botter, his logic is very exploitable. He seems to have a deep bankroll that came from one large tourney/SNG win (his sharkscope has a negative ROI until one giant straight line upward), and probably isn't in danger of getting caught. Am I obligated to report this player, or should I continue to just use his weak spots to make as much as I can?

[tubk]

stopped reading at step 3 because this person isnt a bot

[Spaggy]

Tubk: I'm not doubting that people can play that many tables. I'm not aware of many that do, but I know they're out there. If I'm an idiot and this is standard practice, let me know. However, further details would be nice.

I should include this point: He basically incriminates himself in his chat by bragging that "he'll never get caught" and "I can't prove anything" etc etc.

[Josem]

can you cut and paste the actual chat?

[edfurlong]

[ QUOTE ]


I should include this point: He basically incriminates himself in his chat by bragging that "he'll never get caught" and "I can't prove anything" etc etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

He's messing with you. There are like six billion people 20 tabling stars.

[Spaggy]

EDIT: Per response by 2p2 legend, I don't think it's worth pursuing. I wasn't aware that many people were doing the 20+ table action.

Let me run through it really quick...I am reluctant to put anything that could actually lead to his real SN, as I don't want to accuse somebody directly for a lot of reasons. If he is just one of those guys capable of grinding 20 tables, the last thing I want is to cause any problems. I'll take the chat history, swap out the names, and take out hand history numbers, but leave all the chat untouched. Give me a few minutes to edit accordingly.

[Bantam222]

I don't play 20 tables but ill often play 9-12 and i don't talk a lot and i miss a lot of chat in the box because the tables are small enough to only show 3 lines and chat gets covered up by "bantam222 wins $100 with three nines" and i usually ignore it because there are a lot of dumb [censored] talking but if i saw someone trying to talk to me i usually respond eventually...

slow play = lots of tables???

always reloaded to $25...probably a script...a lot of multitablers use them because it can be hard to keep a 100BB stack...just gives you another thing to worry about and you can be missing ev by having less then 100BB

[dibbs]

Set Mr. Gatorade on him

[LeapFrog]

[ QUOTE ]
Set Mr. Gatorade on him

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent idea. A cynic would think that Gatorade only gets fired up about busting a 'bot' after it takes a few k off him, but we all know his heart is pure -- he will be on this. His only goal is to rid the world of bots.

[MicroBob]

I'm 37 and am not as quick a thinker as a lot of 2+2'ers nor do I have any of the AHK scripts but I can play 20 tables of full-ring NL on Stars reasonably easily.
Once I get to 22-24 tables it gets a bit messy for me.
But 18-20 tables of full-ring NL is a breeze.

Him taking too long can mean that he's just playing a lot of tables obviously. But when he finally saw the chat he responded and that kept him more focused to act on that table quicker.

15 seconds also sounds like the amount of time it takes before the warning-beep thing goes off for a player, right?
If he's ALWAYS acting exactly the same amount of time on every single action then I guess that is suspicious.

But when I hear "every single time" I usually take that to mean "most of the time, when I was noticing...but I wasn't looking at every single one of his actions on every single table."

None of this means that guy wasn't running a bot of course.
But I think the evidence is far from conclusive that he is...as all of the stuff that is supposedly so suspicios in the OP doesn't really sound too different from how a lot of people go about 20-tabling.